New Fallen
by Crooked Path
Summary: This starts shortly after the end of Season 4 (therefore: spoilers, if you haven't seen S4 yet!). Lucifer is struggling to readjust to life as the King of Hell when a new arrival brings clues to a murder case that Chloe is working - and in danger of getting wrong.
1. Chapter 1

Not all pain is alike. This is the first thing you learn in Hell. And this pain was new.

When he had first been cast down, so long ago, Lucifer had hated his throne, but he realized now that he while he'd despised the thing itself, he hadn't minded sitting in it. If anything, he'd liked being removed, visible, immobile. He knew no one was controlling him then. There wasn't anything to control: he wasn't an action, he was just a presence. His feelings – of rage, of abandonment, of fear, of guilt – those were his own, inviolable, perfect. And perfectly on display on his seat high above his wretched domain.

In retrospect, he'd secretly been rather fond of the throne that he'd hated. It had suited him.

It did not suit his pain now. And he knew he had to stop squirming. The whole point of being visible was to be a commanding presence. The demons needed to know the King of Hell was there. The King of Hell did not get restless, and he certainly did not _wriggle_.

The problem was, Lucifer did. He wasn't sure if he liked what it said about him, that losing Chloe and his home on Earth and his real life, the one that he had made for himself because it was what he wanted – no, he reminded himself fiercely, not losing, _giving up_, he had chosen this too – had left him empty and gray on his perch for a few days but now just left him itchy. Being fidgety seemed beneath the depth of his loss, and yet it was what he felt. It didn't make him hurt any less.

Lucifer caught himself mid-squirm and froze. Thinking about not wriggling had distracted his attention from acting on not wriggling. He glanced around quickly. He could look more closely at the tiny specks seething across the landscape beneath him to see whether any of the demons had caught him, but why? Of course they'd seen him. They loved to look at him when they could.

He jammed a heel into the notch in the throne's base he knew so well and stood balanced on one leg, his other dangling over the void. His wings unfolded in a rush of ashen air. The specks below scattered. Yes, they'd seen him all right, but they thought he was in a mood and were frightened. That was good, he supposed – terrified demons were obedient demons. Depressing, to be cast in the role of bigger monster again, but good. It was his job, wasn't it? Or, at any rate, what the situation required.

Anyway. He had to move. He just didn't have anywhere to move to, but no one had to know that. He pushed himself off the throne and let himself fall for one exhilarating moment before twisting his body and spiraling lazily over the ugly, broken architecture of chambers and pits and alleys. He tried to make his directionless circles look intentional, which was becoming its own chore (although watching the demons below flee from his slow path wasn't charmless), when he realized there was something he was interested in after all, at least a little. Enough to pass the time, anyway, and enough to give him a destination.

He wanted to see someone who'd just come from Earth – from _his_ Earth, from Los Angeles. He wanted to see through their eyes, while it was still recognizably the world he'd just lost. One of the nice things about being alone was that no one was haranguing him about the risks. He knew the risks perfectly well – it wasn't the risks that had kept him from going through the doors all those millennia. It was that he hadn't been interested in that level of detail if he did not absolutely have to deal with it. Now he was interested, so now he was going. He'd be fine.

Now that he had something to look for, Lucifer opened his senses.

There was a certain thrumming over-ripeness to the freshly arrived that was hard to describe but easy to follow. It was like a whining vibration in the air, or maybe a sharp, too-sweet smell.

And he was spoiled for choice, of course, although it narrowed down a bit when he focused more intently to figure out where the new-fallen had come from. They drifted down like snowflakes, except in greater numbers. But, he needed only one.

They were all the same, really, so Lucifer whispered "Eeny, meeny, miny, MOE," and then broke abruptly into a sharp dive.

He landed lightly on his feet, red soles tapping gently against the hard gray rock, and yanked open the door in front of him.

"Hello, Moe!" Lucifer announced cheerfully. He scanned the scene, drinking in the detail.

It was perhaps not entirely what he had hoped for, although it was recognizably LA – he could tell from the skyline in the distance. The heat was familiar, too, and delicious. It unwound something inside him, in a small way. The heat of the sun was different in kind, not just scale, from the heat of Hell-fires.

On the down side, he was standing on a weedy patch of lawn outside an unprepossessing house crammed in by more of the same. An equally unprepossessing middle-aged man was on his knees, stabbing out a dandelion with a garden knife. There was a pile of uprooted dandelions next to him, most of which had broken roots – they'd be back. The man looked up sharply. There were heavy shadows under his eyes.

"Me?" he said.

"_Yes_, Moe, _you_, try to keep up."

"My name is Alan Jessup," Moe said, frowning.

Lucifer smiled and spread a hand against his chest. "And I'm Lucifer, or the Devil, or whatever you like to call me, because there's not a lot I can do about it, just like there's not a lot you can do about what I call you, and I'm going to call you Moe, because I've done it twice now and I've gotten used to it."

Moe blinked. "I don't understand. I've been suffering the worst horror imaginable over and over again, and then suddenly it's interrupted by the Devil himself, who comes in and is – mildly annoying?"

"You might be overreacting to weeding, but all right, to each their own, fair summation, also not what I'm interested in. Just like this tatty little neighborhood! Do you have any deeply shameful and traumatic memories set on a nice drive by the coastline or, I don't know, Totoraku, I had a lovely meal there? I don't suppose I could get lucky enough for Lux. Or a police station, which would doubtless end up being the wrong one anyway. But there's no harm in asking, is there?"

"I – what?"

"This is _Hell_, Moe. I don't know what your entrance fee was – that's generally up to you – but you don't have to be boring in obsessing over it, although most people are. There are a million things humans feel vile about and serve perfectly well. Switch it up!" Moe looked at him doubtfully. "Oh, come on, Moe, it'll be fun."

"You said deeply shameful and traumatic."

"Well, there are parameters we need to work with, but a change is as good as a rest, yes?" He patted Moe on the back. Moe did not look encouraged.

Abruptly, he stiffened. "You'll want to go now," he said in a tight, leaden voice.

"What? No, I don't think you've answered any of my questions-cum-requests, nor even particularly tried, so that might be a bit premature."

"You'll want to go. I –" Then Moe froze even more completely, as if he weren't in control of himself any more. He went back to his weeding without another word or glance.

An older woman with a pinched face emerged from the neighboring house. She cast a glare of deep significance in Moe's direction, stomped up to what Lucifer supposed had to be the boundary line between their postage-stamp yards, and started spraying something ill-smelling from a plastic bottle.

"That stuff's toxic," Moe said, even though Lucifer could feel him struggling to say something else underneath. The Hell loop had Moe tight in its grip, and he couldn't fight past it any more. _Really_, Lucifer thought, mildly horrified and, despite himself, somewhat impressed. _To Hell, over dandelions._

"If you'd take care of yours in a timely manner, _before_ they flower, they wouldn't keep showing up over here in mine," the woman snapped. She sprayed a lot more than she needed to, clearly making a point. Lucifer stepped back to avoid getting misted. She was ignoring him – unlike Moe, she wasn't real, she was just part of his mental furniture, and so she played only the role he gave her.

"They're an important food source for bees," Moe answered. "The flowers are what they eat. I mean, the nectar."

"I see any bees, they're getting this too." She squeezed the nozzle and spritzed a mist of herbicide into the air.

Moe gritted his teeth and returned to his task. His own front door opened then, and a woman about Moe's age came outside. She wore bland, comfortable weekend clothes – a blocky t-shirt over loose knee-length shorts – and had gray hair cut short, and Lucifer could feel Moe yearn for her in a way that seemed entirely disproportionate to this pudgy, ordinary creature who now said in a puzzled voice, "Alan? There's a call for you on the land line? He said it's from work, and it sounded right, but – the land line?" She huffed a small laugh. Lucifer could feel Moe's heart lacerating at the sound of it.

_No no no, no_, Moe screamed internally, while his body stood and brushed off his knees and his voice said calmly, "Did he say who he was?"

"Dave something?"

Then things happened very quickly.

The underlying current, the part of Moe that knew, remained unchanged, that anguished scream, but the veneer, the part of Moe that was playing out the role he'd acted in life and over again however many thousands or millions of times in the day or so he'd been in Hell, danced through a more complicated series of emotions.

A car door slammed from the curb further down the block, and a nondescript man in a nondescript suit appeared, somehow covering a lot of ground rapidly without seeming to hurry. Moe looked at him. There was a flash of recognition – not the I know you personally kind, but the I recognize you and was expecting you sort – followed by surprise, and then a kind of relief.

The nondescript man glanced at Moe too, but then he looked past him.

To Moe's wife. And the veneer of Moe that was playing a part was confused for a moment, even when the man pulled out a gun, even when the man fired it, even when the neighbor screamed, even when the man disappeared with the same unhurried and yet terribly fast pace.

Moe looked down at himself, trying to find the wound. It wasn't there.

Then he looked back, towards his wife. And that was when the center of Moe and the veneer playing the part joined together in the same cry, because his wife was lying on the doorstep, empty-eyed, a neat bullet-hole in the center of her head.

Moe screamed out loud.

It went dark, but not for long. The yard and the cheap little neighborhood faded back into being, as if the dark were a layer of ink slowly being washed away. The scene gained color, and then definition. Then Moe was there, kneeling on the grass, weeding again. He looked up at Lucifer, anguish in his eyes. "Are you part of it now?"

"Am I – well, technically, yes, but meaningfully, no. But listen, Moe –"

"Then please just go."

This wasn't giving him what he wanted, and he wasn't doing any good. Lucifer sighed. "All right," he said.

*x*x*x*

"Heyyyy lady, here's your morning pick-me-up, _not_ saying you need to feel anything other than what you're feeling, just saying I care." Ella deposited a paper coffee cup on the last remaining empty space on Chloe's desk. Ella's shirt had a cartoon picture of what looked like a cross between an owl and an octopus on it. Chloe puzzled out the bubble-letter text beneath to try to figure out what was going on. The text read: OWL OCTOPUS.

"Thanks, Ella."

"Signs of life! You sound – okay, kind of. You're not just putting on an act for me? You know you don't have to do that, right? I mean, I get it – Lucifer had to go back to England to deal with that inheritance issue and it's probably permanent and you explained that he had to do it for the rest of his family, even though Amenadiel's still here and totally status quo-ing, and in some kind of not totally specified way also for a lot of other people too even though he's loaded, _obviously_, and didn't want or need the inheritance himself, and there's terms and stuff so he's not coming back and I don't quite get why you guys aren't flying back and forth but that's probably covered under 'and stuff', and that is just really hard and not fair."

"No, I promise I'm not putting on an act, thanks. And I know you miss him too. You don't have to put on an act for me either."

"All right! Well, good news, and enjoy the cappuccino!" Ella looked like she wanted to say more but didn't want to disturb whatever fragile progress Chloe was making, so she hesitated, turned slowly, and then walked to her lab, casting occasional glances backwards.

Chloe hadn't lied. She did feel better, a little. There was a reason for it, but not really that she was getting over anything. Today was the day Amenadiel was carrying her first letter to Hell. He'd promised to go once a month or so, when he could. She'd thought at first her misery had played more on his sympathy than was fair (how long was the trip to Hell, and how hard? – Amenadiel said shortly that a living human couldn't endure it, but he wouldn't explain more than that), but not enough to reject the favor he offered – Chloe had stammered her thanks, but Amenadiel had silenced her gently with, "Chloe. I need to see how he's doing too."

Now, at work, it was hard for her to think about anything else. Her last case had been an ugly one, but the murderer had left a paper trail of hiring the hitman who had taken out his wife, and then he had killed himself, so there was nothing left to do, really, but paperwork. Paperwork wasn't going to be enough to keep her mind away from where it wanted to go. Chloe picked up the cappuccino and put it down again. She picked up her phone and put it down again. She picked up the Jessup file and put it down again.

Chloe groaned in frustration with herself and dropped her head into her hands. For the ten thousandth time, she went over every line she'd written to him, and none of them were right, except the first. _I love you and I miss you and I understand. _"I don't care what you say back, Lucifer," she muttered to herself. "Just say something."


	2. Chapter 2

"I have no idea what to say. What should I say?" Luci held the letter, all five precious double-sided pages of it, as if he were afraid it would puff into dust if he looked away for an instant.

Amenadiel, already impatient although he felt a little guilty about that, stood before him in the wide antechamber of his little brother's private quarters. Demons occasionally peeked in and skittered away, frightened by either or both of the angels they saw. Luci perched on the edge of an elaborately carved ebony and leather divan meant for reclining, jittery with energy. "I don't know, Luci. It's up to you. Isn't that your whole thing?"

"Oh, ha ha, brother, helpful as always. But what should I _say_?" he persisted. He looked at the letter again, this time as if he wanted to devour it in juicy chunks, even though he'd already read it enough times he had to have committed every word to memory.

Amenadiel sighed. His little brother had many gifts, among which neither stability nor consistency had ever played a notable part. "Linda is waiting for me. Charlie is waiting for me," Amenadiel said (which was a bit of an exaggeration – Linda kept assuring him that Charlie, in following a human path thus far, was too young to do much more than accept the world as it was). He just wanted Luci to compose something for Chloe and let him go so he could get back to his family and reassure everyone that Luci was, if not happy, getting by. But he knew his words were a mistake the moment they left his lips.

Uncharacteristically, Luci let it slide. He didn't say there were people waiting for him too, people he'd never see again – or certainly hoped he wouldn't. He didn't make some snide remark about how pleasant it must be to come and go as you please, or even refer to that years-ago moment when he'd told Amenadiel to take Hell's throne himself, if the throne needed to be held. Maybe Luci had forgotten that. Amenadiel hadn't.

He just looked a little sadder and gave a short nod, and Amenadiel felt his impatience drain away. He sat next to his little brother, silently communicating that he could take his time. Luci glanced at him cautiously. "I didn't read it, you know," Amenadiel said. "But a good place to start might be to reply to whatever she said to you."

Luci brightened. "Paper and ink!" he shouted absently, and there was the scrabbling of demon claws against the stone floor, fading rapidly into the distance. "Ugh. Velerek, are you there?"

"Yes, my king." A deep, scratchy voice came from the shadows beyond the open arch that led to the rest of Hell. Amenadiel tried not to shudder.

"Well, go after Chuz and tell him _not_ the blood ink, as usual he ran off without waiting for the full instructions, didn't he, and we know how he loves to get things wrong so I have to ask him over and over again."

"He only wishes to hear your commands more times so he can obey you more times, master."

"Just run and catch him, Velerek. No blood ink. Ink ink."

"We have some fine beetle squeezings, my king."

"Good. Fine. Go." He returned his attention to Amenadiel. "What she said was – well, it was very like her. The first part, that's –" He hesitated.

"Personal. You don't have to tell me, Luci."

"Personal, yes. And the rest, most of it, it's the sort of maddening pile-up of minutiae with which she ordinarily fills her days and it's exactly what I wanted to hear, it's like being next to her again, almost, watching her go through it all and somehow pay attention to it all, but that's not quite me, brother, is it? I mean, it's what I want, I want her to keep doing the same. I want every letter from her to be just like this as long as she's willing to send them, but I can't precisely respond in kind." He picked up the letter, treating it as fragile as spider-silk again. "Here, for example, she's talking about the specifics of a sleepover she hosted for three school friends of the spawn. I acknowledge the existence of s'mores created on a stovetop but am at something of a loss as to how to build on this observation conversationally, and I do not mean that disparagingly, brother, you know how much I don't, but it is genuinely beyond me. In the moment, I could find something to say. At a distance, in the abstract?"

"Hm." Amenadiel conceded the point.

"Yes, well, chime in whenever you like. All right, and there's quite a bit about her last case, because you know how punctilious she is even about the simple, obvious ones, which this one could hardly have been more of. The villain even helpfully offed himself after –" Luci fell silent, frowning.

"Well, she was solving cases a long time before your partnership."

Luci was alive with energy again. "No! I mean yes, but no. This, how could I have missed it?" He stabbed a finger at the letter. "Jessup, he said his name was Jessup. She's talking about Moe. And that's _not_ how it happened. Moe was genuinely surprised. That isn't something he could fake."

"I don't know which part of that you don't think is gibberish."

Luci seized his hand and pulled him to his feet. "Field trip, brother! Wings out, it's a bit of a distance."

It had always been easier to go along with Luci than to fight him when he got this way, but when he landed them in a narrow alley and then moved to open a door to one of Hell's self-torture chambers, Amenadiel had to put his foot down, hard. "What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?"

"What?" Luci looked at him blankly. "Oh, the – it's _fine_, brother, I've been in here before."

"It's the opposite of fine, Luci! You almost got trapped in one of these, and our Mother isn't even in this entire universe any more to get you out again!"

"Yes yes, that was before, and it's funny, you know, I was just recently thinking how nice it was _not_ to be nagged about trying new things every now and then, but anyway, I respect your feelings even if I do not share them – there's something you can tell Linda! – and I don't have to show you directly, I'll just pop in and ask the questions myself, back in a sec."

"What? No, you –" But it was too late. Luci was already through the door.

It was a hard ten minutes of waiting, while Amenadiel wrestled with himself as to whether he needed to try to rescue his little brother now, or give him a few moments longer. He really, _really_ didn't want to go through that door. He had no reason to believe he'd have any better luck getting out again than Luci did, and who would be left to go after Amenadiel if he were lost too? "How do you put me in this situation _every time_," he muttered angrily as worry won the internal battle and he reached for the door, only to have Luci come stomping back through it, scowling.

"Luci!"

"Not a setback, exactly. Just not quite progress," Luci said, oblivious to anything but his own train of thought, of course. "Moe isn't talking to me. I think he's rather low in spirits."

Amenadiel closed his eyes and breathed out. Fine. It was a close call, but he supposed he was more relieved that Luci was out of the self-torture chamber than he was angry at the thoughtlessness and recklessness of it all, and he wasn't sure he had the energy or time right now to try, and inevitably fail, to get Luci to see anything other than he wanted to see. "All right. Aren't you the king here? Couldn't you threaten him or something?"

"Threaten him with what, exactly, at this point in his existence? No, I'll have to make do with what I have. Which is more than enough, I would think!"

*x*x*x*

Chloe hadn't known that she was expecting anything when she unfolded the thick pieces of parchment with shaking hands until: _DETECTIVE! It is of GREATEST URGENCY that you revisit your opinion of Moe at once – he is not what you think he is, although he is definitely something, but I can't quite tell what, because he won't talk to me any more_ was definitely not it.

"I am guessing from the look on your face that Luci was writing more or less the way he was talking – he got extremely excited over the recent case of yours you were telling him about, someone named Jessup? Luci calls him Moe; I did not try to fathom why."

"Thank you so much for this, Amenadiel. Lucifer sounds – he sounds the same, is he, though? Is he okay?"

"He's sad. He had some moments of thoughtfulness I've rarely seen from him before, until he went full-blown manic over this chance to work with you again on a case. He misses you terribly, and I hope he managed to say so. But yes, Chloe, he's okay enough." It should have made her feel better, and in a way it did. But in another way it made the ache worse.

"Oh, you think that's all it is, this stuff about Moe? He just wants to feel like part of an investigation again?" She tried to keep her voice noncommittal.

Amenadiel grimaced. "I don't know how much there is to it, but I do think at least he thought there was something there. He wasn't just going through the motions."

"I'll look into it."

"I know you will, and so did Luci."

He left her alone to read the rest, for which she was grateful. Even if it was only more disconnected observations and speculation about the case, she missed that too, and she wanted to savor it.

Chloe curled her legs under her on the sofa and read the remainder of the letter written in his sprawling, elaborate handwriting in some brownish ink that had more of an old-fashioned than an otherworldly feel. Lucifer did go on at length – although via a thousand different tangents – about the case, mixing in useful information (_I assure you, Moe clearly and explicitly anticipated that bullet between his own eyes and no one else's_) that she wasn't sure exactly how she could incorporate, less useful information (_if someone has ever invented a sad clown lawn ornament, _this_ is the neighborhood it was meant for_), and general exhortation (_THERE IS A GUILTY PARTY NOT BEING PUNISHED, while whatever Moe did can't be half as bad, and he's stuck down here, isn't he? Forever. He's down here for all time, and the person whose actual fault this travesty is is walking around under clear blue skies eating ice cream for breakfast. Can we have that?_).

On the last page, though, the tone changed.

_Chloe – not Detective for a moment – you have asked me for very little since we've known each other, and I suppose I've said no to almost all of it and not thought much of it, because I always wanted to give you something else, something even better, which is a fool's errand, really, isn't it, for someone who does not endure but truly loves your sensible brown shoes and quiet nights reading to the urchin and feeding stovetop s'mores to the urchin and the lesser, subordinate urchins she chooses to entertain, and even more of a fool's errand beyond that because who knows better than I that when people ask for what they truly desire, that is what they want, and not another thing? The last thing you asked of me was vast, and although you have not asked for and do not need further explanation, I wish I could describe how wretched and how weak I feel that it was beyond my power to give it to you. Even regardless that it was everything I wanted too: you wanted me to be there. And yet I could not and cannot offer that. All I can offer is my love, but you had that already, didn't you? I don't want to tell you what it's like here, my day-to-day, although I will if you ask. It isn't terrible, not most of it. I can spend a lot of time alone, or creating (even non-violent, sometimes!) amusements for the demons. I have never had to be involved in the hardest parts of Hell, other than knowing they're there. But your day-to-day is infinitely dear to me, and as long as you want to tell me about it, I want to hear._

Then came his signature, _Yr. Svt. L. Morningstar_, and then nothing. She trailed her fingertips over the ink that his hand had directed.

_Oh God_, Chloe realized. _I don't just resent Hell. I'm jealous of it._


	3. Chapter 3

"I already answered these same questions. And they were the same questions asked by _you_. The same person."

Chloe smiled professionally and tried to look like she knew what she was doing here at the front door of the Jessups' next-door neighbor, the one who'd actually seen the shooting. The woman didn't seem terribly shaken by it, but Chloe had learned that people often weren't. Or sometimes they'd be fine and react only weeks or even years later. She wasn't going to judge. She was just going to log the observation. "I know, Ms. Babbage, and I really appreciate you taking the time, but I'm sure you understand we want to make very sure we cover everything as thoroughly as possible."

Ms. Babbage hmphed. "Ordinarily, yes, but don't you prioritize?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I certainly appreciate that you need to maintain public order and deliver your part of justice" – Ms. Babbage managed to communicate just how small she knew that part was – "but that was a paid assassin who killed poor June. Not a member of the community. And he was brought in by that poor woman's husband, who's hardly going to be doing that again. And Alan is gone, the only good thing he's done in three months, and that's their whole family, so what justice is left to deliver, and who exactly would it be for?"

Another thing Chloe had learned was that it was usually best to ignore philosophical questions from witnesses, especially since these philosophical questions tended to be remarkably self-serving somehow. "Why do you say it's the only good thing Mr. Jessup has done in three months? I mean, what changed three months ago," she added quickly when she saw Ms. Babbage forming a spiteful reply.

"I have no idea what changed other than his behavior," she said. "It's not significant."

"Well, it might be."

The neighbor sighed. "I'd never had any reason to complain about the Jessups or think about them much, until Alan suddenly went on this organic kick, and he stopped taking care of his lawn. It was affecting mine, you understand. Weeds don't respect property boundaries. Anyway, it was bad enough that he wasn't doing proper upkeep any more, but he tried to get me to stop spraying my weeds too, including the ones that I wouldn't even have except for him."

"I see. Did you fight over it?"

"No, he didn't yell, exactly, but you know how people are when they get that way. After he said his piece and I thanked him for his _suggestions_, he was judging me every time he saw me."

Chloe automatically glanced to the side at the Jessups' lawn. There hadn't been anyone to inherit the house, so she wasn't sure who had it now – probably the bank, she supposed. Whoever it was, they hadn't done anything with it. The lawn was lush with calf-deep grass and dandelions.

Ms. Babbage followed the line of her gaze. "That's probably what he would have done when he was alive if he thought he could have gotten away with it," she said.

Chloe hadn't doubted Lucifer, not for a second, but it was still satisfying – and maddening – to get confirmation of the detail he'd shared about the squabbling over dandelions. She still didn't have much of anything she could work with, she mused unhappily as she drove back to the station, but at least it was only all the more clear that she had to keep looking. The other thing that Lucifer was right about was that if the wrong person had been punished, the right person was still out there somewhere, and she couldn't live with that any more than he could.

If she could just figure out what to do about it.

She chewed through the same information on the drive back to the station, still coming up with nothing. On the way to her desk, she almost bumped into Ella carrying a cardboard box. "Is that Jessup evidence?" she asked.

"Yup. Bundled up all pretty and good to sit on a dusty shelf." Ella thumped the side of the box.

"Could you maybe – I could carry it for you."

"Nah, I could use the break."

"Well could you –" Chloe abruptly ran out of excuses – it had never been her strong point anyway. "Ella, I'm still working with something there, so if you could just leave it on my desk."

Ella dropped the box obligingly, but her expression was skeptical. "You're still working on the murder-suicide with the 'it was all my fault, I can never forgive myself but at least I can get out of the way and stop wasting resources' note written in the guy's own handwriting one?" she said, quirking an eyebrow. "That was memorable to me. 'Stop wasting resources' – it's like, probably not the first thing that would be on my mind in his position, you know, but I don't think he could've been more clear about the general gist of what he wanted to get across. Or, oh, is it the pro you're looking for, the hit man our guy hired? I mean, he's doubtless long since climbed into a hole till the heat's off, he's probably not even in LA any more, but you think maybe he is? Was there, like, a sighting or something? Because if you've got something for me to science and research up, I am all into that."

Chloe hesitated. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

"Always!"

"Maybe – in your lab?" Ella lifted her eyebrows and led the way. "I don't actually have anything new. Not yet – I'm looking. What I have is just…a feeling."

"A feeling? Okay. Must be a pretty strong one, if you're hitting the brakes on closing this guy out, so you need me for anything, I am here. So when did you get this feeling, exactly? What's the, you know, general zone of squishy something's-not-quite-right-ness so we can start looking?"

Chloe sighed. "It's – not actually my feeling," she admitted. "It's complicated, and it's not really mine to explain why it's so complicated, even what little bit I sort of maybe understand, but I can sometimes, very occasionally, we've actually only done it once, send letters – like old-fashioned written on paper ones – back and forth with Lucifer, and it's really his feeling."

"Hold it. WHAT," Ella said. "WHAT WHAT WHAT."

"Yeah." Chloe offered a half-smile.

"Well, no wonder you've been looking a little better. But seriously? He gets a letter to you and he's talking about this _case_? _You're_ talking about this case? Do I need to hit both of you? Bear in mind you're the only one I can reach."

"We care about the cases. That doesn't stop just because – well."

"You are right. No it doesn't and yes you do," Ella said, pointing a finger decisively. "Okay. Having my own familiarity with the way Lucifer communicates, he maybe didn't make it totally clear why he had this feeling?"

"Well, yeah, no. Basically what it comes down to is that he's certain Moe – okay, for one, he keeps calling Jessup Moe, and maybe there's something about that we can look into? – he's certain Jessup was totally shocked by how it played out, that's his feeling, and it really is just a feeling because he's got nothing to back it up with. I did find out today that Jessup was having an argument with his next-door neighbor about spraying dandelions, but it didn't sound too heated. Definitely not hire-a-hitman heated." Chloe sighed. "Okay, the neighbor said that about three months ago was when Jessup got onto some kind of organic health kick. Did we look that far back at him?"

"We did not," Ella said. "But we sure can."

*x*x*x*

Lucifer emerged into the alley with a sigh. He'd taken another stab at asking Moe for more detail but had had gotten nowhere again, which of course made sense, because it wasn't like anything had changed for Moe, so why should Moe change? He was just doing the same loop over and over. If Lucifer were honest with himself, he probably didn't need to wheedle more clues from the falsely condemned, nor to find out what it was that Moe was really guilty of: now that the Detective knew that there was something to look for, she'd be tireless in tracking it down. His part was probably done. He just didn't want it to be.

A shift in the corner of his vision stopped his thoughts. There was something wrong about one of the shadows. "Who's there?" Lucifer demanded sharply, his voice resonating with command. The demons had seemed to fall back into line compliantly enough on his return – they had what they wanted, after all, the same thing everyone else wanted, someone to blame it all on – but when they showed up where they weren't expected, it was worth paying attention to. And fixing, fast.

A slick gray form covered in black swirls and gristly knobs crept towards him on hands and knees, head lowered. "It is only Ghizi, sire." Not one of the ones Lucifer knew. The voice was a gravelly whine. It was hard to tell from the supine position, but Ghizi looked small, and young. So, maybe stupid, maybe lost, maybe sent on a risky or unpleasant mission by a more powerful demon. Lucifer couldn't imagine who would bother spying on him, though. His quarters were open to all – his throne a beacon across all of Hell. He never made a secret of his movements, because there didn't really seem to be much point. And yet Ghizi had definitely been lurking.

"Hm. What are you doing here, Ghizi?"

"My king, I accept any punishment."

"Thank you for answering that burning existential question. And what about _my_ question?"

Ghizi squeezed his black eyes shut and ground his pointed teeth. "I am trying to serve, master."

"That's what we all do, Ghizi, and I am inquiring as to specifics."

"I am trying to _learn_, master! Who better from than you?" The words burst out in a rush.

Lucifer blinked in surprise. "Oh! Well, good. Just – learn what, exactly? I mean, I was about to fly back to my rooms, and that's not something you're going to be able to pick up, I don't think, no matter how many times you watch it."

"I want to learn to _hurt _more!"

"Ah. Hurt – others."

"Yes! So that I am not a failure! Hurt the others that have been broken too many times and do not respond any longer! I am grateful, worm that I am, that my sisters and brothers give me any souls to scour, but they laugh at me, Dark Lord, because they know I will fail every time, because they give me the souls that have been flayed to strings over so many years, and there is nothing left, master, I cannot reach them, just as my sisters and brothers too could not reach them again, and my sisters and brothers laugh and laugh and will not give me true prey until I pluck pain out of these dry, empty souls that have nothing left. They say I do not deserve it and not until I prove myself will I deserve it, but I _cannot_ prove myself on the scraps they throw at me. I am too small to take better prey by force from my sisters and brothers, and they have already decided I am to be laughed at, not feared. So I want to learn! It is the only path open to me! I cannot be as good as they are, so I will be better, and then I will laugh and they will beg and weep, dining on the offal of humiliation!"

"Ghizi," Lucifer said slowly, "ordinarily this would be oversharing on your part, but this might actually be interesting. Are there many souls like you describe? Numbed out and basically there's no one home any more?"

"Oh, _yes_, sire. Especially the older ones."

"And your siblings' response to this is simply to laugh at how futile it all is? And how futile _you_ are, of course, Ghizi. What it sounds like to me is they're trying to pin their own incompetence on the one person who didn't have anything to do with it." Ghizi's eyes were wide now. "Well, as it happens, Ghizi, I _do_ know how to refresh a soul and keep it from being broken so badly it goes inert and insensate to further ex post facto moral correction. You can't just hit it over and over again with the same thing, and you can't leave it without hope. It's like hitting the same spot on a body. It can be a maddening agony for a terribly long time, but eventually it goes numb." Lucifer's heart was beating faster. He knew Ghizi could hear it, but he was certain the little demon wouldn't understand why. Lucifer had always accepted Hell as it was. He didn't like to think it, but his attitude for millennia had been something like Ghizi's, except with a bit more snarl and evasion: _I accept any punishment (because there's nothing I can do about it anyway)_. But wasn't that one of the things he'd learned from his stay on Earth this time? That sometimes, at least some of the things he had viewed as immutable, as the bedrock of the universe, as imposed upon him by its Creator, perhaps were not?

"I hit all the spots of the body," Ghizi said. "With _knives_."

"Perhaps I had better make my point more concrete. If they're not too far gone, which they might be, the only way we can make these souls feel pain again is if we make them care, and the only way we can make them care is if we give them something that is _not_ pain and is _not_ mindless repetition. We can't bludgeon them back into the place they've fled because they were being bludgeoned there. We have to lure them."

Ghizi frowned, struggling with this.

"Let me color in more of the lines for you," Lucifer said. "I think we should start by throwing them a party."


	4. Chapter 4

Of course he hadn't expected the party to be a glittering success, at least not by normal party standards, and at least not immediately, given that the guests of honor were catatonic (or something well beyond catatonic for which mortal languages had never needed a word and immortal languages had never bothered to create one). Still, he had to admit it was a little damaging to his pride in his ability as a host and facilitator for it to be quite so leaden. If nothing else, there wasn't much appreciation for the level of thought and planning he'd put into the details.

Only twelve of the guests were from Ghizi's pool of the numb. Most of them were souls that were still very much awake, because, as Lucifer had explained patiently to the demons, someone had to get the conversations started, didn't they? The servants, musicians, and writhing dancers clothed in costumes Lucifer was rather pleased with, whisper-thin scales of gold stitched and knotted together with sparkling threads of silver and delicately worked swirls of black iron clamped around their limbs, were demons either wearing their human-seeming aspect, if they had one, or else a glamor that served the same purpose. There were some demons among the guests, too, to make it easier for them to observe and learn.

Demons made excellent party guests if you let them, but Lucifer had given strict orders of moderation (except for the dancers, who he had to admit with some admiration were really outdoing themselves, even with the fairly low-key music he'd ordered). Too much flash and noise wasn't going to gentle anyone out of a stunned fugue. However, as he had known and should have realized the relevance of, demons also did not have a fine grasp of subtlety. Since they couldn't be loud and aggressive, most of them defaulted to sullen withdrawal, which translated to indolent laziness in some cases and something that felt a lot like the watchfulness of a hungry spider in others. It wasn't entirely a festive look.

The non-catatonic human souls weren't much better, as they were arguably a little _too_ non-catatonic. He didn't blame them for being jumpy, again, once he thought about it for a moment, but it wasn't creating the atmosphere he wanted.

And worse yet was Moe. Moe just wasn't working with him at all.

"You haven't had your punch yet," Lucifer said, seating himself with feigned cheer at Moe's side once again, after having done yet another fruitless circuit around the dull crowd. Moe glanced automatically at the chased gold goblet Lucifer had pressed on him at the beginning of the party. It was worth more than Moe's entire house had been – credit where it's due, Hell did metals well. "Go on, you can have just the one drink," Lucifer nudged. Moe shrugged. "All right, Moe, I admit freely that our liquor is generally subpar, but this punch is better than most, and it also has the gift of tongues. Won't last longer than a usual drunk, but it's useful for humans tonight." Moe looked at him blankly. "You're all from different times and places, aren't you? The gift of tongues. I don't mean physical – it's not a clever name for something nasty. It'll just let you understand what everyone's saying, if your Anglo-Saxon or classical Chinese isn't up to snuff."

"I don't need to understand what everyone's saying," Moe said (not that there was much in the way of conversation to listen to anyway). "I just want to go back to my cell." Time tended to stretch in the guilt chambers, but even so, Moe had deteriorated a great deal in just a few days.

"No you don't, Moe. No one just wants to go back to their cell once they're out of it."

"I do." Every time Lucifer had tried to talk to him tonight, he'd said the same thing. _I want to go back._ And he wouldn't talk about anything else.

"Well, you can't. Not until the party's over, and it's only just begun," Lucifer snapped, rising abruptly to perform another hopeless round with his even more hopeless guests.

"Is that why you brought him here, master?" A slender, dark-haired young man stared up at him adoringly, and it took Lucifer a moment to recognize Ghizi in his human guise. The demon wore a close-fitting black suit with silver buttons and buckles, not belonging wholly to any one era or style from Earth.

"What, Moe? Hm – well, I wanted a change to shake him up, although I can't say it's going exactly as I would have preferred. No matter, there's time."

"I think it's wonderful the way you've made him beg for his torture," Ghizi replied fervently. Then the little demon's face fell slightly as he looked across the room at his charges, all of them sitting slumped and empty-eyed as the band played sprightly (but not too heavy) music and the dancers spun in an intricate and beautiful pattern, weaving through the crowd. At least _they_ were having a good time. Lucifer considered joining them – but no, he had things to do here. It wasn't just Moe he was trying to shake things up for, and it wasn't just Ghizi's little problem either.

"The night's young for them too, Ghizi, cheer up. We knew this would take time. Let's take another pass, shall we?" He steered the demon through the room, veering to the side so that he had an excuse to dance just a few steps with the twirling demons before bopping through to the other side and stopping in front of a wiry, narrow-eyed man in embroidered robes who shot to his feet, alarmed, at their approach. "It's all _right_, Aethelwold, we're just saying hello. Say hello, Ghizi."

"Hello. Have you reanimated my victim yet?" Seated next to Aethelwold was a lump of rags that had a person in it.

Aethelwold's eyes darted between Lucifer and Ghizi rapidly. Lucifer sighed. "Oh, Aethelwold, it's all right, you're not in trouble if you say no."

"The words of _Satan_," Aethelwold spat, and then looked terrified at his moment of defiance.

"Yes, very observant. Anyway, never mind Edmund there. How are _you_ tonight?"

"What do you want, Deceiver?"

"Well," Lucifer replied in measured tones, "other than what I already told you, quite clearly – for you to draw out Edmund here if you could – in a more general sense, I wanted to start bringing in a new element, which is giving some souls an opportunity to have some experiences that are not wholly defined by torture."

"Pah. So you can take it away and only make everything infinitely worse."

Ghizi did not have much of a poker face even as a demon, but in his human guise, his transparency was ridiculous. He wheeled around to gape at Lucifer, astonishment in his eyes, and his expression could not have revealed his thoughts more plainly than if they'd been hand-lettered there by a team of dedicated monks and illustrated with little dragons splayed around the starting letter: _he's onto us, he knows!_ Of course that was Ghizi's understanding of things, and it was partly true enough, but actually what Lucifer had just said was probably more accurate. Having Ghizi confirm Aethelwold's cynical take wasn't particularly helpful in the moment.

"Well," he said, "I'm not sure why you can't see the advantages to you, regardless of what my intentions might be, but my Mother did tell me often that I was prone to get a bit stuck on my own point of view, although she should talk, but at any rate, you have the advantage over Edmund that you are actually speaking to me, so why don't you tell me what would make the party better for you, if what you're seeing right now isn't it. Let's keep our focus on small goals, and maybe we can get somewhere."

Predictably, Aethelwold went off on his own tangent. "What do you speak of, Deceiver – what _mother_ can a creature like you claim?" he huffed.

"The Mother I had, I suppose," Lucifer said. "The Goddess of Creation."

Aethelwold reared back as if Lucifer had struck him. "You speak of a _Goddess_!" he hissed, scandalized. "That is – that isn't – how could – they called _me_ a heretic for disagreeing about when to mark the beginning of the day for holy observances. It's why I was sent here!"

"Oh, was that it? I hadn't checked, but I think someone did tell me it was something stupid. What can I say, Aethelwold, it happens. Not my department. Yes, given when you died, you probably would have been Hell-bound for believing in the Goddess even if you hadn't missed the mark on calendrical issues, and yes, she is also quite real and my Mother, although she's no longer in Hell, let alone this universe, so you'll have to take my word for it, which you haven't shown a notable proclivity for. Anyway, at the risk of seeming like the sort of micromanager you seem to take me for, I'd like to bring the focus back to my agenda after all and the fact that you don't seem to have followed through with administering Edmund here his drink so he can understand anyone other than you and me right now."

"The man is not in his senses and I do not trust you, Deceiver. Why should I serve your will and only damn myself the more?"

"I'd suggest that 'partly damned' is a concept like 'little bit pregnant', but leaving that aside, never mind, we're moving forwards, and I'll simply do it myself." Lucifer removed the goblet from Aethelwold's unresisting fingers – apparently backsass was the extent of defiance he was willing to muster – and knelt quietly in front of Edmund's huddled form. He didn't enjoy the reflection and refused to spend long on it, but he wondered what Edmund could possibly have done that reducing him to a state like this for over a millennium was just. Since Edmund had been in the hands of the demons, he hadn't been here on a simple guilt loop like Moe. That is, whatever Edmund had done, it hadn't been solely Edmund judging the severity of it when he was damned. But still.

"It's all right, Edmund," he whispered. "It's medicine in a way, but it doesn't taste bad and it won't do anything that feels bad either. It'll just let you understand people who speak different languages for the time being. And talk to them as well, although you don't have to do that if you don't want. We also have mead and wine, or plain water if you prefer, and things to eat that aren't cruel or disgusting. This night is supposed to be a break from all that." Edmund's dark brown eyes showed no flicker of recognition or understanding. When Lucifer tilted his head back gently and pushed the goblet between his lips, tipping in some of its contents, Edmund swallowed. Lucifer couldn't tell if it was by intention or by reflex, but it didn't really matter. "Thank you," he said. "That's all I'm going to ask of you this evening."

As he took the goblet away – a single sip was plenty for the effect to take place – Lucifer felt a flicker of something, barely perceptible.

It came from Edmund.

Lucifer froze, focusing his senses. There was a faint glimmer of something in Edmund, and it was new, and it was focused on – the goblet? Yes, definitely the goblet.

Well, if that's what he had to work with, so be it.

Lucifer turned quickly to Ghizi. "Bring Vendicath – Vendicath's here, isn't she?" A mulish look crossed Ghizi's face – apparently Vendicath was not one of his favorites – and Lucifer pressed on, letting some of his annoyance show. "I think she's the best metalworker we have here tonight, and that's what I need. _Now_, Ghizi."

Vendicath seemed none too pleased to be pulled from the dancing line, but she was slightly mollified when Lucifer explained that he wanted her to talk about the craftsmanship of the goblet. The reason she'd logged expertise in metalworking was that she liked it. "Oh! Well, do you mean the base goblet itself, which is actually more interesting than you might guess, or the filigree work, which takes, ha, about as long as you'd think, but look at that, you can't argue with results."

Lucifer felt where the faint spark of Edmund's interest flared brighter and said, "Filigree, please – the finer decorative bits. And do you mind coming down here to do it? It's actually the human here I want to listen to this."

Vendicath scowled – why say anything useful to a human, that's not what humans were for – but she knelt down obediently (and in fact as if she were pledging that obedience) by Lucifer, before Edmund, and started going on with a lot of details Lucifer really could not bring himself to care that much about personally except that Edmund grew warmer and warmer until there was a light of awareness in his eyes and eventually, he even lifted a trembling hand to point at an area of decoration that interested him. Vendicath looked pleased at his choice and went off on another long tear about specifics that she and Edmund both seemed to find fascinating despite that they certainly were not.

When Vendicath paused for breath, Lucifer broke in with, "Edmund. Would you be interested in visiting one of the metal-works?"

Edmund inhaled sharply. His lips were moving somewhere beneath his beard. At last, slowly, a whisper emerged. "Yes," he said.

"Well, we'll make that happen, then," Lucifer replied breezily.

"A-a-a-h," Edmund sighed, as if releasing something inside him.

It was like the first chunk falling out of a crumbling wall. It wasn't long before some of the non-catatonics relaxed a little, and some of the catatonics started to look around, blink, and even speak. They were small changes, but the momentum was in the right direction at last.

Once things started moving, the party picked up steam fast, and before he quite knew what was happening, Lucifer was enjoying himself, not just ticking away observations about the next steps in his plans. It turned out that Edmund's fascination with metal-working wasn't important just in terms of the example it set. It shone a light onto a key that unlocked many doors: these souls didn't just want to be entertained. They didn't just want a break from the pain.

They wanted a chance to _do_ something. That was the missing piece they needed in order to be willing to engage with the world and take a sip of inferior mead or take a spinning turn with a dancing demon or toss a soft fruit-core at the head of a particularly insufferable fellow guest. In the space of just a few hours, Lucifer couldn't keep track of all the plans they were starting to gin up for new studies and buildings and devices and records and organizations. He just said yes to everything. If nothing else, it was certainly going to be interesting.

Flushed with success, Lucifer returned to the one particular plan of his he hadn't made headway on yet. He hurried back to Moe's corner, where the new arrival remained sitting motionless. "Moe! Question. Would you like to throw things at Plato? Everyone's doing it. I thought everyone would want to _talk_ to him, but, well, this is why we ask rather than tell, isn't it?" Lucifer said, eyes sparkling with delight now that things were finally picking up.

Moe raised his head slightly, acknowledging that he'd been addressed. "I just want to go back to my cell," he said dully, for the nine or ten billionth time.

Lucifer sighed, instantly deflated. When he reached out his senses, just to be sure, he could tell it was true. Even now that the atmosphere had picked up and there were activities and conversation to be had, there was nothing here Moe wanted – nothing for Lucifer to work with. There was nothing Moe wanted to do. All he truly desired was to return to his torment.

But still, Lucifer was the King of Hell, and the night was a success in other respects. One couldn't have everything all at once, even if one did try. "All right then. Something for you to look forward to!" Lucifer went back to the more fun part of the room, and he left Moe sitting there with his untouched goblet until the party ended.

*x*x*x*

The main west coast office of Resolix Consolidated Insurance was the third and fourth floors of medium-rise building out in a business park a ninety-minute drive outside the city. Chloe was impressed, a little bit, that someone had somehow contrived to build such a blandly ugly little outpost in such beautiful country. They even managed to find a patch of land without much of a view to speak of.

The building doorman waved her through without showing much interest, and the elevator to the third floor opened directly into Resolix's reception area, staffed by a nervous-looking man who couldn't have been much older than twenty and seemed vaguely traumatized at Chloe's appearance.

"I have an appointment with Sandra Meacham," Chloe explained, and the receptionist seemed relieved to be presented with something that he did know how to handle after all. She pulled out her notebook and pen as he called Sandra to the front, and when he put down the phone, he said, "Could I borrow your pen a sec?" Chloe smiled and nodded, handing it over, but something of her confusion (who needs a pen in an office?) must have shown on her face, because he explained, "I think I left mine in the bathroom. I get monitored for how many office supplies I use."

"Do you want to go and check if your pen's still there?" Chloe suggested. The receptionist tilted his head to the side as if he needed to figure out how to explain his answer, and she added, "The number of bathroom breaks you take is a metric too, isn't it?"

"Yep."

"Keep the pen."

Sandra turned out to be a glum woman in her early forties who admitted that she barely knew Jessup as she led Chloe briskly through the open office space. She said she'd been promoted over him two years ago, from another department. "He just didn't do that much, you know, so there wasn't really a reason to talk to him. His performance was, well, it wasn't bad enough that I needed to pay attention to him, and he never caused any trouble, and I wouldn't have thought – you know. That something like what happened would have happened. But people always say that, right?" She shrugged, not waiting for an answer. "Anyway, this is his desk – Valerie's on it now, so I don't think there's really much... Valerie, did Alan leave any stuff in the drawers or anything?"

Valerie did not look enthusiastic at having inherited a notorious desk, and Chloe noticed the people around her sneaking glances. There was going to be gossip about this later. "I don't know, the stapler? Do you need to see that?"

"No, that's okay," Chloe said.

"I think there was a ruler in one of the drawers, which I thought was kind of weird. I could show you the ruler?"

"I – okay." Chloe gave a cursory glance to the ruler, which was made from wood and was indeed a ruler, and then handed it back. "I'm actually more interested in any conversations people had with him or changes anyone noticed in his behavior."

"I knew him for twenty years," the man at the next desk said.

Sandra looked relieved that finally she could deliver something. "Oh! This is – Dave, Pelli, right?" Dave nodded. Sandra really did not seem to be on top of her subordinates.

"Thanks, Dave, I'm Chloe." She handed him her business card. "Is there anything you can tell me – did anything seem different about Alan?"

"You mean right before…?"

"Mm hm. Or in the past few months. Sometimes things take a while."

Dave sighed. "I don't know, he seemed a little upset about things, maybe, but that wasn't really unusual for him? I think his world was kind of small. It was all about his wife. I don't think they had kids or pets or anything – just the two of them. So that was always a little bit, you know, that kind of seemed a little strange to me, but that wasn't something new about him. There was part of me that wasn't surprised in a way."

"What way is that?"

"Just what I said. His world was so small, just him and June. I don't know what would have happened to make him turn on her like that, but that he wouldn't want to stay here without her, that much anyone who knew him at all could guess."

"Okay. Thanks very much. And if you think of anything else." She nodded at her card, which he had placed absently on his desk. She turned back to Sandra. "It would be helpful if I could see his personnel file or any other records you have on him."

Sandra's face closed. "I can't just hand those out," she said. "You understand. Maybe if you could tell me what you're looking for, I can look myself."

"I'm not looking for anything in specific. Just anything that stands out."

"Ah – well, I'll do that and let you know, okay? Until you get the warrant. Look, I'm sorry, but I really, really can't do anything without the piece of paper. They'll have my head on a plate."

Chloe didn't have much hope in Sandra's investigations, but she thanked her and was already on the phone to Ella to get the warrant request in motion by the time she reached the elevator bank. "No, I don't think anyone's going to object to much of anything. There aren't really privacy concerns at this point, and the company doesn't mind, they just want to follow the rules…can you hang on a second? Or, wait, I'll call you back." Chloe realized that the receptionist was waving frantically at her and grimacing in a way that suggested he was torn between wanting to shout and not wanting to be noticed by anyone but her.

"I'm sorry, I just overheard you – you were looking for, you know, his records? Because I can access those from here, if you want to look really quick? Unless you really want to drive to the city and back."

"You can access personnel records?" Chloe said, surprised.

The receptionist's face fell. "Oh, you wanted his employee record, not his customer one?"

Chloe's focus sharpened. "_Customer_ record?" she said.

"Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't have access to the details, but I have to be able to know who's got what policies so I can forward customer calls? He had health, life, auto, and home with us. Which was pretty loyal of him, since they don't even give an employee discount."


	5. Chapter 5

"Please tell me you aren't serious." Chloe slumped internally. Externally too.

"Well, I have been known to venture the occasional jest, but this is a hundred percent legit. Here's the wife's, she definitely died of a gunshot to the head, seriously no surprises there, but _his_ autopsy they haven't done yet. Priorities, right? I mean, technically, it _is_ going to get done, they totally have to, but the ones where the cause of death is a little more mysterious are probably going to come first. Which I think is most of them. Of which…at the moment…there are…a lot." Ella's apologetic grimace deepened with each word. "I'm sorry. I can ask them about an expedite, but I already kind of blew my credit with them on the Feldman thing last week, so unless you have some, like, amazing, or even not-so-amazing piece of new evidence that…"

"All I have is a feeling. And Lucifer's feeling. And a very strong but unofficial hint from someone who has partial record access that Jessup had been making more than the usual number of claims on his health insurance for a few months earlier this year."

"Right before the big event?"

"Well, no. The claims stopped a couple months before that."

Ella shrugged. "I don't know, man. Sounds like it could have been a mental health thing. Like he knew he was going off the rails and tried to get some help? I mean, it holds together."

"It does," Chloe said, frowning. It had felt like something when the receptionist had told her about the flurry of claims Jessup had made, but now, that excitement was draining away. She kept finding things out, but the facts kept leading her back to the conclusion that everything was probably as it seemed.

And then there was Lucifer. He was leading her somewhere else. Had he ever been wrong? Well, yes, she had to admit that he had. But had he ever been wrong about a victim or perpetrator he found boring?

She sighed. "I know it makes sense, and maybe I'm just... But we don't actually know, right? You know, just to check the box. So do we have a record of who his doctor was?"

Ella brightened abruptly. "Okay! Okay, I think I can give you a yes on that one!"

*x*x*x*

Dr. Barbara Nahra wasn't available today, but her office helpfully explained why: she was attending a conference on some new medication called Avanaqet, and that conference was being held in a hotel downtown. Chloe debated briefly whether it would be easier to pry information out of the unsupervised staff or the doctor, but it wasn't much of a debate – the staff didn't sound unhappy, while the doctor would be in a hurry to get to her next interminable PowerPoint presentation, and because Jessup had been a long-term patient, as well as one with recent notoriety, Chloe was confident Nahra would remember enough of the details to let Chloe know whether she was following a real trail or not.

So, the doctor it was. And that was how Chloe found herself in a bustling hallway with a thick blue carpet talking to an apple-cheeked man in a nice (but not too nice) suit, who was standing at the open doorway that led to a buffet line glittering with crystal and silver and staffed with chefs in tall hats. Apple Cheeks held a tablet that he tapped occasionally, beamed with implacable positivity, and was as good at deflecting her questions as the most cunning of street-hardened criminals.

"I'm trying to talk to someone – if I could just look in the room for a second to see if she's here?" Chloe could see part of the buffet line and the edge of the seating area from where she stood, but her angle didn't give her a clear view of any of the faces, except the chefs'. She craned her head for a better view, not expecting it to do much good, but just to get the point across to Apple Cheeks.

Apple Cheeks was well capable of ignoring a lot more than Chloe's broad hints. He remained on-task and on-message with a resoluteness that would have satisfied the Spartans at Thermopylae.

"Sure! Just as soon as I get your initial order. Don't worry, just like everything at Avanaqetpalooza, the buffet is free. It's for the public good. And for science, right?" He winked. "Do you think Avanaqet devours your patients' most sensitive health concerns the way you're going to devour filet mignon, or the way you're going to devour a lobster tail?" He looked at Chloe. Chloe looked at him. "Each order is a vote," he explained helpfully. "We'll be compiling the results and reporting on them at the closing ceremony."

"I'm not really hungry right now, I just want to –"

"We also have vegan and gluten-free options, of course. Do you have any dietary restrictions? One tap from me here, and our chefs will get started on your initial order! Because whatever it is you'll eat up every scrap of, that's what Avanaqet does with your patients' most pressing health anxieties."

"I really just want to see who else is here, and if she's not, I won't take any more of your time –"

"Time is always in short supply," Apple Cheeks said, nodding sagely, and for a second Chloe almost believed she'd gotten through to him. "That's why you need a single, reliable solution for what one study described as 63% of the symptoms most patients say have the most meaningful impact on their quality of life. And that's –"

"Filet mignon, I heard you."

"No, the solution is Avanaqet. Which is you in this case. The filet is the symptom. Figuratively." He took a breath and beamed broadly again. "If you're thinking you can't choose, you don't have to! With that 63% coverage I mentioned, Avanaqet devours multiple symptoms. So place as many 'votes' as you like!"

"Seriously, you're not giving people twelve lobster tails for a snack."

"Avanaqet can handle a lot more symptoms than twelve. So is that what you'd like?" He lifted his eyebrows expectantly and held his forefinger poised to tap.

"No, I –" Chloe didn't want to order twelve lobster tails. It was ridiculously wasteful. But what she hadn't realized until just that moment was that part of her had been braced against someone else ordering the twelve lobster tails breezily and then maybe actually eating them or starting a food fight with them or handing them out to passers-by, but she didn't have to brace against that, because the person who would have done that wasn't there any more.

It was like a hole opened up in her gut. Not that she hadn't been grieving him already, okay, maybe not enough, maybe she'd been trying to shove it aside as much as she could to keep up with her responsibilities, like she had to, but she just hadn't expected it to hit her right now.

"Just – just a filet," she managed to stammer in a thin whisper, and she brushed past Apple Cheeks with his cheery, "_Great_ choice, enjoy! Did you – okay, I'll tell them medium rare."

Of course it was all for nothing. No one munching on lobster or steak or lobster and steak looked anything like Dr. Nahra's picture. She asked a few of them if they knew where the doctor she wanted was, but she knew it was a long shot, and she came up with nothing. Chloe left before her filet was ready, trying not to feel guilty about the waste and desolate that Lucifer wasn't there to laugh at her over it and waste a thousand times as much just to shake her out of it, or just because.

After escaping the buffet, she tried the next room down the hallway (the placard posted in front of the door simply said _What Are The Odds?_, surrounded by jolly, brightly colored question marks), which turned out to be a series of stands describing various luxury prizes – high-end televisions, two-week cruises, Caribbean retreats, golf packages, catered yacht parties – each of which was a raffle where the entry fee was one dollar and the odds of winning were 63%, "which one study found was the percentage of symptoms patients described as most affecting their quality of life that are also potentially impacted by Avanaqet". Chloe was starting to hate the number 63.

Doctors were milling around the displays, munching or sipping on various treats as they pondered the options. A young staff member, shiny as fresh-hatched plastic, rushed up to Chloe. "If you're wondering what the difference is between a Peloton and the old-fashioned kind of exercise bicycle, let me tell you, it's huuuuuuge, but why don't you just enter for one and see for yourself? It's easier than listening to me explain it!"

"I'm actually just looking for someone," Chloe said without much hope, but it turned out that the staffer had signed Dr. Nahra up for the extremely likely chance to win a cooking-class for twenty friends with a celebrity chef at a high-end sushi restaurant and a helicopter/wine-tasting tour less than fifteen minutes ago, and he was pretty sure she'd been headed for the Resilience Room.

A Resilience Room sounded like some sort of modified low-key yoga (of a sort suitable for people who'd just eaten twelve lobster tails) to Chloe, but when she got there, what she found was a bouncy castle, modified for adults.

_Avanaqet loves mitigating symptoms, and it never stops! Can you outlast Avanaqet's enthusiasm? Probably not, so why not just have fun together!_, read the sign. Chloe could see six or seven people bobbing up and down the bouncy floor through the mesh sides of the castle, tossing around some sort of inflatable shaped and colored like an Avanaqet lozenge (purple and white).

Lucifer would have been eye-rolling bored with the raffle; there wasn't anything there that he couldn't buy a better version of for himself. But he would have loved the bouncy castle – his eyes would have lit up, and he would have announced happily, and loudly, that he was getting one of these straight away for his orgy room.

That's how it would have happened, if he were here. What did happen was Chloe simply looked at the bouncy castle in silence.

"Oh, hey." An attendant rushed over, wreathed in concern. Apparently her face wasn't as impassive as she thought. "It's okay. You can join in any time, you don't have to wait! Just put your shoes in a cubby over here – or we've got lockers if you're wearing any jewelry you need to take off?"

Chloe tried to wrestle her expression into line. Back to business. "Is that Barbara Nahra I see in there?"

The attendant shrugged. "You don't have to sign in for this," she said. "I go where the bouncy castle goes. I don't learn names."

So: she was going in. "The cubby's fine," Chloe said, toeing off her shoes and shoving them into a slot.

"New player! Clear the doorway!" the attendant shouted and then stood back. The bouncing didn't seem to slow down much, but it moved towards the back. The attendant nodded, and Chloe ducked her head and climbed in.

The light was filtered into dusk by the stripes of Avanaqet purple on the mesh walls, and her chin-length hair was plastered to her forehead and chin by sweat, but it was still recognizably Dr. Barbara Nahra at the other end of the castle, bobbing up and down on her knees and waving her arms for someone to throw her the inflatable lozenge.

It was not to be. "Fresh meat!" one of the other participants shouted gleefully and flung the inflatable at Chloe just as he belly-flopped onto the floor, sending a ripple that knocked her off her feet and dropped her to all fours. The inflatable bounced off her, and someone else grabbed it, bopping it repetitively into the air over his head.

After the lively welcome, the belly-flopper lost interest in her, and the rest of the group had never had any. Chloe had expected some sort of organized game with the inflatable, but the doctors were just enjoying the bounciness independently and batting the inflatable around at random.

And, okay, yes, it was kind of fun. Chloe sprang back from all fours to a crouch, then to her feet, then to her knees again. She repeated some of the moves with a twist. She even felt a little elegant, floating between poses like a fairy or an astronaut, until she saw what the other people doing similar moves looked like.

All the while, she worked her way towards her quarry. A stroke of luck, she managed to snag the inflatable along the way. She tossed it in the air and booped it in Nahra's direction. The doctor snatched it out of the air and then gave a nice volleyball serve directed at the belly-flopper, scoring a good hit against the side of his head. Chloe surmised that perhaps she wasn't the only one he'd knocked off her feet.

"Dr. Nahra?"

"Mm hm. Sorry, names, you were…?"

"We haven't met. I'm Chloe Decker – Detective Chloe Decker." It was hard to have a serious conversation bouncing up and down, but Nahra wouldn't stop, and the floor wouldn't stay still enough for Chloe to stop either, even when she tried. "I'm just wrapping up the details with one of my cases – one of your long-term patients was involved."

Nahra's face grew somber. She knew immediately who Chloe had to be talking about. "I don't discuss my patients," she said. "You understand."

"I absolutely understand and respect that, Dr. Nahra, but there are some inconsistencies – nothing that would affect you or, obviously, nothing can affect Mr. Jessup now, but we want to make sure we do right by everyone, him included, and I was wondering if you could tell me even in just in general what it was that he was seeking some kind of medical attention for earlier this year – it looked like he had a number of appointments right in a row, and then they suddenly stopped –"

"I don't discuss my patients."

And of course she didn't have to discuss her patients, and ordinarily Chloe would be delighted that she didn't discuss her patients, but right now she needed something, anything to go on. "Okay, yes. It's just that everyone wants me to let this go, because it looks – I think you know how it looks. Only I think there's something missing in the story. And I'm not going to be able to get an autopsy in, I don't know, probably this decade, and I'm not going to be able to get warrants, because no one cares, Dr. Nahra. So that's why I'm – I just wonder if there's anything you could do to help. And maybe I'm wrong. You could tell me that too. Maybe there's nothing there."

"I'm sorry," Nahra said. She dropped to all fours and bounce-crawled towards the exit in a remarkably efficient motion that Chloe had no hope of copying, and then she was gone.

Defeated, tired, beginning to get a headache, and frustratingly hungry for lobster tail, Chloe made her own far clumsier way to the exit and tried to muster a smile for the attendant. She hooked her shoes out of the cubby with two fingers and stopped, frowning.

She pulled a small rectangular piece of paper – a prescription scrip, she realized – out of the heel of her right shoe. Chloe let hope surge for a moment, but when she looked at the scrip, all it said was: _C25.1_.

Was that even a message for her, or was it just some random piece of scrap – no, it had been put in her shoe deliberately, it had to be from Dr. Nahra, and it had to mean something.

It meant nothing to her.

She should have gone home. It was too late for Ella to be in to give her a pep talk, and Chloe probably would have thought better on her own sofa with a glass of wine, but Trixie was at Dan's, and the quiet was getting to Chloe more lately. So, she settled in at her desk, the midnight shift milling around her, and tossed the mysterious cipher on her desk. She stared at it. It sat there, continuing to tell her nothing.

A burst of energy and noise sounded behind her, and Chloe glanced up, torn between looking annoyed that her concentration was broken or actually being relieved because her concentration wasn't doing her any good. Maze strode in triumphant, shoving a partially trussed bounty in front of her. "Got one! Who wants to pay me?"

Maze glanced over in Chloe's direction, her gaze cool. And then her eyes widened. She gave her bounty a shove, pushing him to an even more helpless position kneeling over a chair, and she wheeled around and stomped over to Chloe's desk. Chloe froze. She hadn't really gotten things back on track with Maze yet, and when the demon had decided to remain on Earth rather than return to her beloved Hell with Lucifer, Chloe hadn't been sure how she'd felt about it, other than every time she saw Maze, she had a jolt of guilt, and then remembered that she probably deserved to have that jolt of guilt.

So now Maze was coming over with purpose in her eyes, and Chloe waited.

"Okay," Maze said without preamble. "Usually, there's nothing all that interesting over here. But I've got to know why today you have what looks like a prescription for malignant pancreatic cancer. I mean, they can prescribe that now? This is a thing that we do? Because if so –"

Chloe blinked and then looked down at the scrip. "Malignant pancreatic cancer? This – can you tell me where you see that?"

Maze snorted in derision. "C25.1. It's the medical billing code for that. One of them."

Chloe blinked again. "You know medical billing codes?"

"I didn't get to be Hell's best by not knowing them," Maze replied.


End file.
